How to measure content marketing ROI the right way

However, when you peel back the layers exhaustive inbound jargon in that, the key players in the content marketing ROI conversation also have other much deeper worries and concerns that I hear a lot from my clients:

The content marketer:

“I need my boss to see that the work I’m doing is actually making a difference. Whenever I share numbers, it’s not uncommon for people in leadership to not see the growth as having a real impact on the business. I can’t connect the dots between the wins we’re seeing on the marketing side to actual revenue - what if one day they decide the work I’m doing is an expense, and I get cut?”

The marketing leader:

“I’m under a lot of pressure from sales and leadership to deliver with our content marketing – I need to demonstrate that my team is delivering qualified leads to sales that should be converted into closed deals. But somehow I’m always swimming upstream proving the value of the work they’re doing. If I don’t start showing that value soon, I may be on the chopping block - or my people might be.

I also need better reporting because I need to know, in real-time, what is and isn’t working, so I can make pivots faster to optimize the results we’re getting.”

The sales stakeholder:

“We need leads that are actually qualified, not just marked as qualified by marketing. Plus, if we're investing all of these resources in creating content, it only makes sense that we're making sure we're doing more than just 'increasing brand awareness,' because 'awareness' alone doesn't close deals.”

The business owner:

“If I’m going to invest in inbound and HubSpot, I need to know what we’re doing is actually working. Every dollar and cent we’re spending on marketing right now needs to count, we can’t afford waste.”

If any of that sounds familiar, you're in the right place. In this completely wild episode – trust me, this is NOT your usual episode of the HubHeroes, friends (more on that later) – we dig deep into every nook and cranny of the content marketing ROI conversation. 

How do you get everyone – marketing, sales, leadership – on the same page about what success looks like? What should your technology stack look like to effectively measure the ROI of your content marketing? Those are just a few of the questions you'll get answers to ... 

Here's what we cover in this episode ...

• Overcoming the misconception that marketing is an expense and not a profit center, as well as why this myth persists.
• Why content marketing ROI is such a pain point for most organizations and what to do about, depending on where you're starting from.
• The most common mistake folks make when they first start out with the content marketing ROI reporting conversation and how to avoid them.
• From a non-technology standpoint, what needs to be true within an organization for effective content marketing ROI reporting to be possible.
• ....and from a TECHNOLOGY standpoint, what needs to be true within an organization for effective content marketing ROI reporting to be possible.
• What a smart content marketing ROI reporting cadence looks like ... or should you even have a cadence? (There's some debate here!)

And then there was one other big surprise bombshell we dropped in this episode!  

This week's HubHeroes bombshell

When you tune in this week, you'll notice something wildly different. While I'm 100% here, spitting HubSpot fire like usual, there's someone else who will now be permanently joining our ranks as a HubHero ... the one and only Liz Murphy:

Now, some of of y'all may be familiar with Liz, as she's been in the inbound and HubSpot world for years – most notably as the previous editor-in-chief at IMPACT. (She's also graciously contributed some great content nerd knowledge here before about blog outlining and developing a content strategy.) Today, Liz is out on her own as an independent content strategist and brand messaging therapist through her consultancy, Buona Volpe. 

And she's also agreed to be the permanent HubHeroes Podcast facilitator and ringmaster on each week's episode. Why did we make this change? Well, I'll be honest with you, it's a pretty vulnerable story on why I decided we needed to do this, and I talk about it at the start of this episode, so tune in to find out ... 

YOUR ONE THING FROM THIS EPISODE

This episode is ridiculous in how much actionable goodness is packed inside of it. So, instead of listing it all here, just trust my guy, Devyn, and watch Christopher Penn's INBOUND 2016 talk on building the data-driven customer journey. It is a must-watch for anyone (in any seat) who cares about content marketing ROI.

RESOURCES FOR THIS EPISODE

• Why HubSpot and why inbound? (HubHeroes, Ep. 1)
• What does great content actually look like? (HubHeroes, Ep. 2)
• How to create a monthly content marketing ROI newsletter (Liz Murphy)
• Christopher Penn's INBOUND 2016 talk on building the data-driven customer journey
• Questions about reporting ROI with HubSpot? Let's talk!

SHOW TRANSCRIPT

George B. Thomas: Well, Hub Hero community, this is not the intro that you're used to because we have to sit down and we have to have a conversation because every now and then in life, you realize that you have to make a change. So what I need you to do is understand that the real episode is gonna start in a little bit, but we have to have a conversation. Sometimes when you're trying to do the best you can do to serve a community, you come into a time where you realize maybe you have been doing them a disservice. Let me explain. The other day, I was on a meeting with my most fabulous content strategist, Liz, and she was asking me questions about a piece of content that we wanted to create.

And in the middle of just talking or what I thought was just talking, she got a look and the look, well, honestly, it scared the shit out of me. And at that moment, she said, where is this? During the Hub Heroes podcast. To which I asked her, what do you mean? She said, dude, you're spitting fire.

And here's the thing, we talked about it and we realized together that for the first twelve episodes of Hub Heroes podcast, I, your boy George b Thomas, have been in facilitator mode. Meaning, I've been trying to get the baton to pass back and forth between myself and Max and Devin and create an amazing podcast experience for you, the listener, but I haven't been able to fully give all of myself. And if this is the first episodes you're listening to, one thing that you'll learn in the future is I really love to give 100% of myself to you, the HubSpot community. And so when I heard those words, I knew that something needed to change. And so in the episode that you're about to listen to, I get to not be a facilitator, but I get to, as Liz so eloquently said, try to spit some fire to help you be a better HubSpot user.

Now before we change into this different type of podcast, just know Max will still be on the show. Devin will still be on the show. Special guests will still be on the show. Liz will be on the show, and she will actually be the facilitator helping us create the best content for you, the HubSpot user, to be able to use moving forward. Now I don't just want you to jump into the episode and be like, what is happening?

So I actually need you to meet Liz and all of her awesomeness. So what we're gonna do is do a short introduction where you get to know Liz. By the way, Liz, ladies and gentlemen, has been sitting here quietly the entire time listening to me, and I believe preparing to almost even tell her own version because I like to water things down occasionally. But, Liz, how the heck are you doing, Liz?

Liz Moorhead: Greetings, lessors. Attention, fives. A 10 is speaking. No. I'm just kidding.

Hi, George. My favorite part of how you watered down that story was what I actually said to you was, you looked at me and said, uh-oh. I'm not sure I like that face. And because my head was in my hands, and I said, I have never been so inspired and effing infuriated in my entire life. Well, what do you mean by that, Liz?

Where is this George? Where is he? And ladies and gentlemen, that's why we're here today. Hi. I'm Liz.

You will get to know me.

George B. Thomas: Yeah. And I do want them to get to know you. So I have a few questions that I've prepared. So first of all, why don't you explain to the Hub Heroes listeners kind of who you are, what you do, and now as of recently, where you actually do it?

Liz Moorhead: Oh, that's right. Okay. So I have actually been in the HubSpot and inbound community since 2,014. I worked at Quintain, which was a partner agency in the HubSpot world. I worked at Impact, as the editor and chief there for a number of years.

Again, an elite partner agency. Most recently, I was at a boutique marketing firm based in Tennessee as the head of brand and content, and now I am on my own. I have been lucky enough over the past almost 10 years or so to specialize as a content strategist. Some people call it a content therapist. George, I think you can attest to that because sometimes they yell at you, but I promise you it's because I love you.

Mad at you and I love you. But, no, what I really work to do is I work with purpose driven brands, entrepreneurs, business leaders, industry thought leaders, as much as I hate the term, it is a real thing, to create the content they need to make money, drive revenue, spark a movement, build a business, whatever it is that they are trying to do. Whatever work they're meant to do on this earth, I help them find the words and the content strategies and the brand messaging and the stories that sell to do it. So, yes, now I do that on my own. I own a small consulting firm called Buonavolpe because, well, that means good fox in Italian.

And I wish I had some sort of fancy story around it, but really it's just because my lawyer, Michael Gottlieb, told me I needed a name someone else didn't have. I didn't wanna make up a word. I'm part Italian and I like foxes and here we are. So, yeah, that's a little bit about me. I have been very passionate about inbound since day 1.

I had a similar moment to you, George, that you had when you went to inbound in 2012. And it was this whole idea of, like, hey, guys. What if we stopped being intrusive buttheads with advertising and instead educated people so they could make their own decisions. I'm like, wow. That sounds great.

Tell me more. That's where I am. That's what brings us to today where I was yelling at you 2 weeks ago, and now I'm on your podcast.

George B. Thomas: Yeah. I absolutely love it. And here's the thing, One of the things that I loved when we first started the podcast is that we got to know people a little bit better. Now HubSpotHeroes listeners, I hope you realize that Liz can actually bring the fire. Liz understands the inbound ecosystem, the HubSpot world that we're talking about.

So this is gonna give her the ability to unlock questions and go in directions that maybe a newbie type person wouldn't allow for this podcast, so it was a perfect fit. But at the beginning of our journey with Hub Heroes, we got to learn about Devon and martial arts, and we got to learn about Max and Paintball. And, hey, let's not forget. We got to learn about me and my peanut butter and pickle sandwiches, which, by the way

Liz Moorhead: I have grievances about that.

George B. Thomas: Which I absolutely still love to this day, but, you know, don't knock it till you try it. But, Liz, here's the thing. I'm super curious. Outside of the HubSpot echo inbound system, what is Liz's passion about? Like, what's your, like, oh, this is, like, kind of my little hidden or unhidden passion.

Liz Moorhead: So for those who do know me, this is not hidden, but most people do not realize this. So when I got into inbound, I actually had a problem. I had 2 now 2 competing personal brands. There's Liz Murphy, content strategist, speaking at inbound, speaking at marketing prof, speaking at all these different places, making content strategies. And also Liz Murphy, the beer writer for 6 years of the Capital Gazette in Baltimore Sun.

And what's so funny about it is my beer column is actually how I landed my first inbound job. I was working at a digital publisher. I had just become the beer writer for the Capital, which is based in Annapolis, Maryland, which is where I live now owned by the Baltimore Sun. And I met Kathleen Booth who at the time owned Quintain Marketing, the inbound agency. I met her by accident.

A friend of mine invited me out to lunch and I'm like, I don't want to go out to lunch. I want to sit in the dark and cry because I just got laid off. She's like, just come out for lunch. It'll be fun. So I put on I changed out of my pajamas into cleaner pajamas, schlepped down the road to a local restaurant only to find that the entire staff of Quintaine Marketing was there, having just done the Mid Atlantic Inbound Marketing Summit.

And I'm like, oh my god. If a lightning strike could just happen right now, that would be great. And I turned to my friend and I said, I am so excited to see you and everyone you work with looking like I just got dumped. So Kathleen comes walking up. If you've met her, you know her.

She's one of the most beautiful women I've ever met. 5 foot 11, boss lady, absolutely incredible. After leaving Quintin, she's now the special, VP of You write the beer column, don't you? Yeah. I don't like beer.

I'm like, oh my gosh. I want to sink into the floor and become one with the carpet. This is just a great day. And then she said, but I really like your writing style and I never miss a column. I'd love to talk to you because we're struggling to create content.

And I'm wondering if any agency owners are out there still wondering how to do it. That is a common problem. And that's my little journey was born. So the backstory is is that I was a beer writer for about six and a half years. That's how most people know me.

In fact, people in the beer community were surprised to find out that beer writing is not a full time job, and I actually had a full fledged career as a marketer. Like, it's they're baffled. They're completely baffled by it. I also was emotionally allergic to olives until the age of 36.

George B. Thomas: Oh, wow. Yeah. I love me some olives. But here's the thing. More importantly, Hub Heroes listeners, I hope you understand a couple things.

1, anybody who loves beer is cool. Also, anybody who likes to go out in public in their pajamas and be comfortable is amazing. And, hopefully, you can tell too that Liz is a masterful storyteller and is gonna add a ton of value to episodes moving forward. Now this is the other thing that I wanna end with before we kick into the actual episode. Liz, because everybody gets a cartoon, Max is Batman.

He's got his tool belt of amazing useful actionable items around HubSpot and inbound. Devon is Deadpool. He can be the funniest dude who then immediately starts to just spit stuff that makes your brain explode. And, of course, myself, I'm Aquaman. I just love to swim in the sea of HubSpot goodness and call all of the animals in to do the things that they need to do to make people successful.

I asked you so that we could get your character created, who your favorite superhero was. I would love for you to share with the Hub Heroes community who you picked, and if you can, why you picked that individual?

Liz Moorhead: Well, I'd be happy to do that, Georgie. I picked Wonder Woman for a couple of reasons. Number 1, I am a 6 foot tall brunette. She makes 6 foot tall brunettes cool. Am I someone who is like wonder woman and that she is beauty, she is grace?

No. I I fall as easily as I breathe. Like, that that's not that's not one of my superpowers. However, one of the things I love about wonder woman is how so much of her superpowers are derived from things you cannot see or they are driven by truth. Content strategy works, and content strategists are effective when their work is so powerful, it seems effortless, like no one was there behind it.

Like a great message on a website. Have you ever pulled up a website and you look at a line and it hits you right in the stomach and you're like, man, that looks so easy. Why couldn't we do that? That's because there was a very smart and beautiful content nerd behind it, my little friends. Same thing with revenue generating content strategies.

It looks effortless at the surface and there is so much going on underneath that you do not see. And the other thing I like is truth. I like truth. Authenticity is dangerously becoming a word that marketers are about to ruin. Marketers, please stop finding words and using them all the time.

It's like you're becoming like the people who say I love you on a first date. And I'm like, no. Do not. I'm leaving, you weirdo. But truth is so important because so much of what makes great content marketing is rooted in truth.

Authenticity, sure, but truth. When you speak truth, when you quote spitfire, that's when you really start getting things that are not just value or actionable. Those are the things that actually make you go, holy cannoli. I can immediately put this in my business and see a difference. Truth is where it's at, folks.

So that's why I picked Wonder Woman, also tall. Go tall women. Woo hoo.

George B. Thomas: Yeah. I absolutely love the fact that you picked Wonder Woman. And by the way, might I just say I, Liz, think you're beautiful. And every time I've seen you on stage, it has been graceful and amazing the way that you interact with the humans that are there to learn. Now here's the thing.

We're gonna get into this actual episode around a very interesting topic. So, Liz, why don't you just share with the Hub Heroes podcast listeners what they're about to listen in on.

Liz Moorhead: I am very excited about this episode. So this week, we are answering the big question. How do you measure content marketing ROI? I find this question absolutely fascinating because on the surface, people are talking about, oh, results and reporting and, like, what dashboards do you need and what needs to be talking to that. And those are all things we're absolutely going to be getting into into this episode.

But as I noted to George when he and I were talking about my vision for this episode, why I find this question so fascinating is that it's loaded like a baked potato. When people are asking how to measure the ROI of their content marketing, there is always a mega undercurrent of fear. You have the content marketer who's sitting there publishing content for months thinking things are going great, seeing leads and traffic and yeah. And all of a sudden their boss one day pops their head and goes, hey. Do you have any reports so we can actually see the ROI?

And you're sitting there going like, wait. I'm sorry. What? I thought we already had that. You're the marketing leader who's getting stressed out because sales and leadership, no matter how many numbers you show them, still say you are an expense, not a profit center, not a revenue driver.

And those are huge massive problems or you're the business owner sitting there saying, I invest I want to invest in this. I could see the big vision but if I can't measure it, especially right now in this economy where every single dollar and cent in your budget has to count, there cannot be any waste. You have to be able to see if your content marketing efforts are working. You have to know in real time if they are or aren't so you can make a pivot or turn the faucet on harder where it's working. So that's why we're having this conversation today because content marketing ROI is not solved with a single dashboard and it's not solved with a single report.

It is solved with everybody getting together, talking it out, and hugging it out, and George having absolutely god awful takes about sandwiches.

George B. Thomas: Oh, yeah. Love me some god awful sandwiches, I guess. But ladies and gentlemen, are you excited as I am hub heroes? Are you ready to take this journey down the content ROI road? Well, then without further ado,

Max Cohen: let's

Liz Moorhead: George, get out of my way because now it's my turn.

George B. Thomas: It absolutely is.

Liz Moorhead: Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Hub Heroes podcast. It's gonna get weird and wild and actionable.

Intro: Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by silo departments? Are your lackluster growth strategies demolishing your chances for success? Are you held captive by the evil menace, Lord Lack? Lack of time, lack of strategy, and lack of the most important and powerful tool in your superhero tool belt, knowledge.

Never fear hub heroes. Get ready to don your cape and mask, move into action, and become the hub hero your organization needs. Tune in each week to join the league of extraordinary inbound heroes as we help you educate, empower, and execute. Of heroes, it's time to unite and activate your powers. Before we begin, we need to disclose that both Devin and Max are currently employed by HubSpot at the time of this episode's recording.

This podcast is in no way affiliated with or produced by HubSpot, and the thoughts and opinions expressed by Devin and Max during the show are that of their own and in no way represent those of their employer.

Liz Moorhead: Welcome. Hi. I'm Liz Murphy, content strategist, content therapist. And we are here for another episode of hub heroes, and I am stoked because we're gonna be answering one of my favorite questions today, which is how you measure the ROI of your content marketing. And I'm asking for all of my friends out there and by friends, I mean me.

Gentlemen, I need your help. But before we get

Devyn Bellamy: We're here.

Liz Moorhead: Oh, you're here?

George B. Thomas: We're we're here. We're here to help you.

Liz Moorhead: Max, Devin, are you both here as well?

Max Cohen: I'm here, but I might also need some help on this one.

Liz Moorhead: Oh, boy. So this

Devyn Bellamy: I'm here, and I'm kind of an expert in this.

Liz Moorhead: Okay. So Max needs an intervention. Devin needs a mic. And, George, we're gonna see what happens with you today. I'm really excited.

But before we dig into today's topic today, I thought it might be fun. So we've been kicking around the HubSpot and inbound block here for a little while now. Right, guys?

George B. Thomas: Yeah.

Liz Moorhead: What is the worst piece of advice you have ever gotten about reporting ROI of content marketing? Max, your face right now. Do you need to go take a walk, run a lap?

Max Cohen: I mean, I don't even know if I've ever gotten any good advice on this, to be honest with you. I mean, like, the conversations that I hear about people talking about ROI for for content marketing, it's just another one of those things where I feel like everyone has their own definition. You know, sometimes you're measuring the impact of the effort. Sometimes you're literally saying how much revenue did we drive and how much did we spend on the stuff to get there, and then every sort of shade in between. So I I just don't think I've ever gotten any good advice around it.

It's just a lot of conversations that have just made me confused and cringe a lot.

Liz Moorhead: I love what you just brought up there, and we're gonna get into that because I think a lack of shared definition around ROI is gonna be a huge theme today. George, you're already, like you're wrestling around like you're ready to get in the ring. Alright. Tell me. Hit me with it, brother.

George B. Thomas: So it's not so much as I've gotten this advice because I hit the game so early. It was like the beginning of content marketing was becoming a thing and being birthed. But the worst advice that I've ever heard given was write it and they will come, which is absolute bullcrap because I have run into CEOs who have written articles, 7 salads our CEO loves, which does absolutely jack squat and actually brings us to the point of, well, how do you prove your content ROI? Well, not right about salads. That's what you don't do.

So if you're listening this, which you have to be because you're like, what is gonna happen today? It is not a thing of you just write it without a strategy. It's not that you just write what makes you feel good. It's not that you just write some random thought because you were driving past a billboard and got inspired by God himself. You have to have a reason to be writing about the thing.

So worst advice ever, write it and they will come.

Devyn Bellamy: Last bad advice that I got wasn't even so much bad advice. It was a bad question. It was the wrong question. The wrong question is how many views did it get? Did it go Yeah.

Liz Moorhead: I would like to officially put out there that the words viral, authenticity is up there too. Like, those can just go. Marketers can just stop saying those words now. Just no thanks.

Devyn Bellamy: Yeah. And for those of you who may be curious, it's like, but aren't isn't isn't that what we're going for? Aren't we we trying to be viral? The thing is is that virility is great if you have a monetized channel and all that matter to you are views, and the more eyeballs you get, the more money you make. Great.

Good for you influencer. If you are not an influencer, if that is not the goal of your channel, then what you're doing is entertaining what are called vanity metrics, metrics that are there to make you feel good and look good and sound great. We got 350,000 unique visitors. Wow. That's amazing.

How many of them converted? How many of them bounced? Were any of them actually relevant eyeballs? Because I can pay Russian bots to give me that many views. It's views don't matter.

What happens with those eyeballs is what matters.

Liz Moorhead: I'm gonna be perfectly honest, guys. I think we could just end the podcast right here. No. I'm just kidding. That is fantastic because here's how I always like to address that when somebody says, well, I wanna go viral.

I'm like, do you wanna catch a cold or do you wanna make money? Those are 2 wildly different things when it comes to content marketing. In terms of the worst advice I have ever gotten, it's I understand sales is upset, but we know these leads are qualified.

George B. Thomas: Oh, hell no. No. No. No. No.

No. No. No. Hang on. I I gotta I gotta throw down here because I think that part of this conversation as we move forward is gonna piggyback on something that, again, years ago, because this whole go viral thing is just the most obnoxious conversation I think any company can have internally, is simple I I'm a simple guy.

I like to come up with simple things. And so years ago, I went that I'm not going viral. I'm going value. And when we think about not going viral, but going value, what I want us to realize on this whole the the side that I'm gonna play on, I don't know about you gentlemen or Liz, but the side I'm gonna play on is when you come down to measuring your content ROI, fundamentally, you have to try to figure out if you're trying to be successful or significant. And out of significance, will you be successful with your content?

I'm gonna stop it right there.

Liz Moorhead: I think we all need to take a moment and absorb all of that. No. But you bring up a really good point there because that's really where I wanna get to with today's discussion today. I think when people take a look at content marketing ROI, they're immediately running to the tool. They're immediately running to the technology.

And yes, that is a very important part of the conversation. And, Max, I know you got a ton to spit on that. But we also have to start today's conversation with the people part of the problem. And a couple of you have already touched upon this, which is lack of shared definition, people not being on the same page, people running off at a 1000 miles per hour in different directions within the same organization, all in pursuit of this elusive ROI, which which I'm pretty sure people just only know how to spell. So let's start there.

Let's start with the big question. Why do you think reporting on content marketing ROI is such a pain point for most companies right now.

Max Cohen: We think return on investment. I think there is plenty of technology that will show you what the return is because we have a lot of technology that helps us measure our revenue. If you look at HubSpot for example, your sales reps close deals and those deals have money attached to them. It's pretty easy to understand the return. And it's like pretty easy to tie it back to like a campaign you ran.

That's why we have attribution reporting and things like that. But I think a lot of time, people have like a hard time identifying or defining what investment means because there is monetary investment. There's dollars you go and pay writers or dollars that you pay for your software. There's dollars that you pay the people who are salaried employees of you. But, also, they spend differing amounts of hours on this project and the other project and these other things that they're doing.

They're working from home, so you can't quite monitor them like you could before. But, also, investment can mean a lot more than dollars. It can mean effort. It can mean a change in strategy. It can mean the things that you're sacrificing and no longer doing because you're going full bore into this whole inbound thing.

I think a lot of people get really hung up on how are we calculating that because it's kinda difficult to have a universal understanding of what the investment part actually means because people budget things differently. But, yeah, I think that's a big piece of it that confuses the shit out of me and I'm sure a lot of other people too.

Liz Moorhead: I wanna go to you, George, here for a second to respond to that because here to quote modern day philosopher, George p Thomas, here's where my brain goes. So where my brain is going is that we even need to take a step back further for a moment. Because when I'm talking to a lot of marketers, yes, it is about this disconnect between what is investment actually mean. But if we even take a step back further, a lot of times marketers and marketing leaders are asking this question. Revenue.

There's often this vibe that marketers are an expense, not a revenue generator, not a profit center. And, George, I know you spend a lot of time working with marketing and sales teams and leadership and getting them on the same page. Can you talk to me and and talk to all of us a little bit about what you see there, that lack of alignment that really starts the ROI conversation?

George B. Thomas: Well, I definitely can talk about alignment, but I wanna take a step even further back. Because what I wanna do for a second is I wanna talk to all the CEOs. So, Liz, if I do my thing here and forget what the original question is, you can bring me back. But we have to fundamentally understand in CEO c suite, I'm talking to you right now. What freaking kind of marketer do we have in the seat?

Because here's what I'll what I'll say. If you actually do a survey on the marketers in your building, I would guess that 75 to 80% of them are going to be creatives. They started out in journalism. They started out as designers. They started out as developers.

They have a creative brain. Now let's talk about the original conversation here. Reporting ROI on content, return on investment. Creatives many, many times have a hard time with math. We are talking about numbers, people, and I want crans.

So if you're looking at your organization wondering why can't marketing give me the ROI of content because you're asking Picasso to use an abacus? And so what I would say to you is realize that you need a reporting strategist to actually take care of the data, the numbers, and prove these things that your creative marketers, when aligned with sales, can actually drive more revenue than you've probably imagined because they're not freaking stressed out about the math test next Friday at 2 o'clock in the boardroom.

Devyn Bellamy: How you Basically.

Max Cohen: How you doing? You know

Liz Moorhead: what's funny though? I kinda disagree. Oh. I kinda disagree.

Max Cohen: 1st And

Liz Moorhead: I wanna tell you I have

Max Cohen: podcast ever. Let's go. Fire back. Let's Let's go. Get them.

Liz Moorhead: 5 years ago, I was that content strategist, obsessed with my art and with the creativity piece, but I was more effective when I didn't say, well, you know, I'm just not good at math. Don't make me do it.

George B. Thomas: Oh, I don't disagree with you. I don't disagree with you. Now what I'm saying is I'm not saying that we as marketers can't change. I'm not saying that once we are aligned can't change. I'm not saying that once we are aligned in a direction that we should go, that we can't get there.

What I'm saying is fundamentally, there's not many my my words, not the people out there listening. Many c suite say, hey. This is what I need you to start to focus on. They just are like, why don't we have it? And I'll I'll go with you, Liz, because here's the thing.

I'll never forget. When I actually started working at Impulse Creative, my buddy and pal Remington Begg looked at me on a meeting and said, dude, when you get math under your belt, you're gonna be an unstoppable marketer. So I don't disagree with what you're saying right now.

Liz Moorhead: Right. But I think the thing is is that I think a lot of content strategist can sit here and say, this needs to get easier for me, and part of me wants to also say, you need to level up a little bit. So when I took over content at Impact, I sat down and I told you this story. I met with Nick Sal, our buddy. He was on the sales team there, Melanie Collins.

And I sat there and I said, hey. Just ballpark it for me. How much of our content do you use in the sales process? And Nick is the sweetest guy, and he did not want to hurt my feelings. So after about 2 minutes of saying very, very nice things that told me nothing, I said, so how much?

And he went, oh, at least 1 to 2% of our content. And I about fell through the floor. I wanted to sink and become just just into the tile never to be revived again. And the reason why I'm bringing up this story is this, is that I get it. I know it's not a native skill set, but I think it's an underdeveloped area where content strategist need to level up their game.

Because what will happen is that the longer they wait to develop proficiency in the tools and the reporting mechanisms that need to exist to show that the content that they're creating makes the money, the harder it's always gonna be to prove your value.

George B. Thomas: Okay. Devin's leaning in. Devin's leaning in. I now I need to know what he's thinking because you unlocked something for Devin right there.

Devyn Bellamy: Well, you both have, and I've been sitting here quietly taking it all in. I can tell you the exact moment I went from being just an artist also knowing how to use the abacus. It was inbound 2016. Believe it was day 2, and I was sitting down at Christopher Penn's session, and it was called building the data driven customer journey. And it was about 20 minutes and 30 seconds into his speech when he completely departed from where we were going and says, hey.

How many of you guys know how to add values to your goals? And it was like boom. And so it it it wasn't just about the capability or the capacity. It's just flat out just didn't know how. A lot of marketers, the reason why it's a pain point is because we're stuck in the vanity metrics, and we don't know how to attribute value to what it is we're doing.

We don't know how to take credit for some of the things that have traditionally gone just to sales, and and that's when this happened. And, thankfully, if you go on YouTube and look up inbound 2016, Christopher Penn, building the data driven customer journey, you too can experience this life changing moment that I had when he walks through the equations to calculate lead values. And then how you can turn those numbers into content and and and data that's digestible for the c suite. And that is where there's a major disconnect between our what we're doing, which is colors and words, versus what cc wants, which is fiscal validation of your importance within the company. So it's one thing if I can tell you that we had 300 people fill out the form.

It's another thing if I can tell you the dollar value of every person who filled out a form, how much that person is worth to us based on our sales conversion rates. And then I can tell you that if sales wants to increase their capacity and increase the number of people that they close based on their conversion rates, then what they're going to need is this additional number of people coming in from marketing. And guess what? I don't see that happening unless you give me money to spend on marketing and pay per click and Facebook and LinkedIn ads. And then you can make the case by this is our ROI because this is what we've spent on marketing, and this is the dollar value that has come back that is directly attributable to our marketing efforts, thanks to my knowing of the math and my ability to use HubSpot.

George B. Thomas: So first of all, before we move any further, we have to give all of the Hub Heroes listeners a big fat warning. If you're listening to what Devin said and you don't know who Christopher Penn is, warning, warning, warning. He is one of the most nerdy mathematical for fun, sits in programs Python and does Google Analytics 4 standing on his head on one finger while balancing a plate. This dude is like the ninja of freaking data from I think it's Trust Insights, I think, is the company. Him and, crap.

It doesn't matter. Just be warned. You're you're gonna swim into the deep end of the pool when you hang out with Christopher Penn.

Liz Moorhead: So make sure you check out the show notes because I will definitely be digging up that link on the YouTuber nets to share from inbound 2016. So we talked a lot about the people problems, the soft side of it. So, Max, I wanna go to you. We'll start with you. I know.

You look so excited and scared. We'll start with you and then everybody else can chime in. On the people side, what needs to be true to effectively report on content marketing ROI?

Max Cohen: I feel like people just need to understand that it's not gonna be a perfect science. And I think everybody needs to just come to a common understanding of what the r means and what the I means. I mean, that's, like, the biggest thing. Because I think as you go, like, levels down, the definition of that changes because people are responsible for different things. The the marketing leader is who's responsible for the marketing budget.

They clearly know what the eye is, but maybe the marketer creating the content and coming up with the ideas and launching all the campaigns doesn't have line of sight into that, and their eye is just the effort that they're putting in. And so I think in order to have a serious conversation about it, I think the the team, the company has to come up with their own definition of it. Your definition and your metrics of success that you build is ultimately what matters. You can prove it has a positive impact on the business when that number is high and not when it's low. Trying to scour the Internet and see what everybody else is doing in terms of their definitions of it.

Again, you're just gonna find a 1,000,000 different ones. So I'd say in terms of, like, what needs to be true is does everybody have a shared understanding of what ROI actually means? True? Then that's what needs to be true. Regardless of what the definition is for you guys.

Because if there's anything that we've ever learned having any of these conversations, is that words mean different things to different people and that's fine.

George B. Thomas: It's okay.

Max Cohen: Everyone just chill out. It's okay if it's not the same definition. Just make sure it is with the people who matter.

Liz Moorhead: But I wanna point out one thing that Mac said there that is so important. I want to underline it in Sharpie. You're making an assumption not only externally outside of your organization that everybody has the same definition. It is so important critically that everybody gets together. You get around the campfire at your own organization, and everybody says, do we agree this is what success looks like and this is how we're going to measure it.

Now, George, I see you digging trenches with the pacing you're doing. Spit it, brother. Let me hear it. What do you got?

George B. Thomas: Yeah. So immediately when you asked that question, the word that came to my mind is belief, meaning belief in themselves or having somebody in the c suite that believes in them. Because here's the thing, I go back to years years ago when Marcus Sheridan said, hey. We're gonna start a podcast. I didn't believe in myself.

I said, that's the dumbest idea. I hate my voice, but I had somebody above me that said, I believe in you. We're gonna do this anyway, and it became one of the greatest strengths of all times. See, here's the thing. 2 veins I wanna go down right now.

One is the fact that you have belief in yourself that you can actually create the content that's gonna get the impact or the return that you want. Because as soon as you second guess yourself, you're gonna write half ass content instead of going all the way in to what it could be, the magic that you could be creating. The second vein I'll go down is belief in the fact that you can and going back to a earlier conversation, turn yourself into whatever kind of marketer you wanna be. HubSpot talks about t shaped marketing. That happens over time.

Sure. You're great at design. Maybe part of it is you're great at math. Maybe another part of it is you're great at SEO. Well, you can't be great at everything, but you can be really deep and great at one thing and know a little bit about the rest.

But you have to believe in yourself that you have the capability to actually learn the things that you need to use in the future to be successful.

Liz Moorhead: I don't know about you guys, but I feel so uninspired. George, We're gonna have to work on you. Yeah. Right. I hope that You can't

Max Cohen: do that.

Devyn Bellamy: Take this.

Max Cohen: You can't do that

George B. Thomas: right when I'm about to take a drink. You're you're not allowed to do that. George,

Liz Moorhead: just some feedback, and and we're gonna leave this in the podcast. I hope you take this feedback in the spirit in which it's given. I really struggle to under I hope you I I really struggle to understand where you stand on certain issues. So if you could just be a little bit more forward with your opinions, that would be incredible.

George B. Thomas: I'll try moving forward. Moving forward, I'll do I'll I'll do better.

Devyn Bellamy: Thank you for

Max Cohen: your feedback.

Liz Moorhead: Thank you. We'll we'll we'll set a we'll set a KPI for that one. Now, Devin, I loved what you were saying earlier about really calculating these different lead values. But let's talk about your version of this answer. What needs to be true people wise in order for that to happen?

Because people can go and watch that inbound 16 talk. They can start getting excited about these things. But what internally do you see as the thing that needs to be true?

Max Cohen: One of

Devyn Bellamy: the biggest things is your team's ability to be detail oriented from a technical aspect because one of the the biggest challenges that we have as marketers is proving our worth more than outside of the vanity metrics and showing that what we're doing is actually making us money and not just making us popular. And in order to be able to do attribution, you gotta be on your game from a technical standpoint. So having tracking URLs on everything. Anytime someone clicks on something, I should be able to attribute that click somewhere within our analytics. Now if you're going pure Google Analytics, that's fine.

You just you're gonna have to put UTM codes on everything. On emails, you're gonna have to get fancy with having different phone numbers that get attributed from different sources. And there's programs in SaaS companies out there that provide that. But at the end of the day, you're going to need to be able to track every action to a customer. And every customer, how they got in the door, know how they got in the door before they spent the money.

You're going to hopefully have had eyes on them in some capacity, even if it was in an anonymous capacity, before they get in. But if you want to be able to walk in to C Suite and ask for money. And I'm not just talking about a raise. I'm talking about money to do your job, though the raise is nice. You're going to need to be detail oriented and be able to keep an eye on your data.

It's A lot of us are artists. I would dare say most of us are artists. With art itself like like colors, then with words. And if not with words and colors, then with movement and video. But at the end of the day, what separates, you know, a good marketer and a good artist from a great one is your ability to show the fiscal impact of your actions through that being a technical person.

Liz Moorhead: David, every time you speak, I just wanna be like, okay. So I I guess we're done here. That pretty much covers it. That was I would like everybody to hit that little go back 15 seconds button a few times, and I want you to listen to that 3 times and let that really sink in because that detail orientation is so critical. Because it sounds like you're talking about technology, but it really starts with a detail oriented mindset.

The one thing I would say here before Max guess what, we get to talk about technology are you excited? Yeah.

George B. Thomas: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Liz Moorhead: That's his love language. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the one thing I'm gonna throw out there for me on the people side that needs to be true is that the thing I have trained anybody who ever worked with me on my content team or whenever I'm hiring and training a new content manager is this.

Your first job is not content. Your first job is relationship management, which means you show up and you give a damn. You need to give a damn about sales. You need to give a damn when they're hungry. You need to give a damn about the business objectives that your c suite has.

You need to show up every day and say, I see my sales team is hungry. I care about that. Let's talk about how we actually enable you. Stop just saying the word sales enablement and actually do it. It's a verb.

Devyn Bellamy: This is actually straight out of my my manager's feedback because we just had, reviews over at HubSpot. And I am not afraid to share this because it is relevant to all of us. Our jobs as marketers, and this is a direct quote from my manager, shout out to Katie Lambert, our job is more than just showing up and getting the job done. It's also about communicating and stakeholder management. It's about being involved.

And even if they're asking questions that don't make sense because you understand we're not there yet, like, when they say, when is this piece of content gonna go out? And then you say, the product isn't even done yet. I don't have all the spec I don't have a loose spec sheet from the product team. I don't have enough information to put out this piece of content. Instead, you can say, you know what?

Give me 2 weeks. I'm just waiting on x y z, and then we're gonna be able to handle it. But to us as marketers, as creatives, it sounds like we're pushing it off. But to the numbers people, it's more of a, okay. That checkbox has been checked off in my mind.

I can move on to the next thing.

Liz Moorhead: Somebody's actually taking care of me and my needs. The sales team, they are so malnourished. Nobody cares. No everybody's like, go make a bunch of money on your own on an island. Good luck.

George B. Thomas: So I have to jump in here because you're talking about caring, Liz. And what I would say, whether it's looking up at the c suite or whether it's looking directly across the room to your sales team that you're serving, yeah, that's a dramatic pause on purpose, is the fact that the word that everybody has to have, especially marketers, is having empathy or being empathetic to the things that the people around you have to do. Like, they are trying to swim across the entire ocean. You have 75 boats, and you're like, uh-uh. You can't have one.

When you could actually give your salespeople a boat and some oars and they could freaking roll around to success. And you know what? If you lead with empathy and you're serving your sales team, when they hit that success point, guess who they're gonna high five? The marketer that's kicking ass and taking names. And now everybody's like, no.

No. No. No. No. It's not really about the expense.

It's about the team cohesively working together to drive revenue.

Liz Moorhead: Hey, George. You wanna say the word humans? Just once.

Max Cohen: Give it

George B. Thomas: to the humans, people. Oh. It's about the freaking humans, people.

Liz Moorhead: There it is. Guys, we got a few we got a little too long into this without him saying it's about the humans. I don't know if anybody else was feeling wildly uncomfortable, but I was. But now forget the humans. Humans are dumb.

Let's talk robots. Let's talk about

George B. Thomas: Did we really just say that on the podcast? Mhmm. Yep. Yeah. Noah, leave that in.

I did. Holy crap.

Liz Moorhead: That's what's up. Humans are dumb. Robots are awesome. Let's kick some butt. Now okay.

So we've talked about the people side of the equation, but we have people who are going to be detail oriented and using abacuses and things like that. But what needs to be true on the technology side? Because you can have let's say we're in a perfect world. Your organization now, everybody went on a retreat. There were no trust falls because we've all moved beyond the 19 eighties, and we're not retreat.

There were no trust falls because we've all moved beyond the 19 eighties, and we're not doing that anymore. Instead, c suite, marketing, sales, service, we're all on the same page about what success looks like. We all have shared definitions. We get back to the office. What needs to be true from a technology standpoint?

Max Cohen: You have to have your reporting set up in a way that makes sense to you and is is actually giving you actionable data. For example, if you're looking at HubSpot. We all like HubSpot. I mean, we'll talk about HubSpot for a second. You need to be able to, like, organize your data in a way that's telling you the story you're trying to understand in order to be able to start to even think about what sort of an impact that your efforts are driving.

So, like, I always think about the campaign's tool in HubSpot. And there's a story that I tell behind it to, like, get people to understand, like, why it's there.

George B. Thomas: Because a

Max Cohen: lot of people don't use it for, like, what it's intended to be used for. Those of you who don't know, there's a campaigns tool in the marketing hub. And, basically, what that allows you to do is take all of the different things that you build when you're creating a campaign. Things like landing pages to collect your leads, other website pages that might support it, the emails you're sending, the workflows you're building, the social media posts that you have, the ads you're running, all these different things that you're you're building in order to create, you know, what we would kind of loosely define as a a marketing campaign. And it puts it all together in one place, so you can see how all this stuff is performing.

But the cool thing is is that since HubSpot's also a CRM, you also get some data about the deals that are closing, that your sales team is using. Now, you gotta make sure, like, your sales are being able to be reported back to you in some way. Right? Which is why the the campaigns tool is great because it just looks at that deal object. When you have a way of collecting information about a certain campaign and how that's performing, and then being able to identify the sales that it's actually leading to.

What needs to be true is you have to have a way of, like, marrying that information together. So the campaigns tool in HubSpot is a very lightweight example of something that you can use in order to do that. Because you can look at the campaign, you could say, here's the stuff we built. Here's the new contacts we created, the new leads we got, the existing folks we touched, but this is how much revenue was driven because of it. Right?

Does that give you ROI yet? No. But it gets you close. It gets you close because now when you're that lone wolf marketer that was like, hey. We're gonna we're gonna stop just using billboards and TV ads, and we're gonna actually try to give an honest run at this inbound thing.

And your boss comes and asks you, hey. You're spending a lot of time writing blog posts and doing TikToks and and running these, like, ads on the Facebook and doing all this stuff. Now you actually have a pretty lightweight way of saying, yeah. And see how all this stuff I'm doing is actually, like, leading to sales and and deals being closed. Again, you're not necessarily fully outlining what the investment is.

The tool's getting there, by the way. They're doing a lot of work behind the scenes to make it so you can actually input money you're spending on this stuff you're building to actually give you a true ROI because we know what the r is. Right? We could track what the r is. So that's that's one thing.

The other one of the most amazing tools in HubSpot though, I think, right, is is for for tracking ROI. And you could do it in a very literal sense is the ads tool. So when we think about technology, ads tool is another great example. With the ads tool, we literally know what you're spending on your ads, and then we know which deals are closing because of those ads. And it gives you a literal ROI, but it's an ROI specifically on just your ad spend.

What's not in that equation? How much time your marketers are spending on writing the copy and developing the imagery and all the other stuff that that that content's leading to. But you can at least, like, hyper focus on, like, just the ad spend itself. What sort of return we get in there? Again, I'd say really think hard about how much you wanna measure it because there's so many different ways to look at it.

You really just gotta focus on what's important for you to track. But again, you gotta set your technology up in a way where you can actually answer the question on is the impact we're trying to make actually having the impact that's intended.

Liz Moorhead: I completely agree with that. One of the things that I always like to point out to people when they're sitting here trying to unpack this technology puzzle around ROI is I always start with, well, is your marketing automation and your sales CRM talking to each other? Because if if that if that link is not there, it doesn't matter. Because here's the thing, cupcake, if you have your marketing intelligence in one silo and then your sales stuff in another and they are not talking to each other, how on earth are you going to connect those dots? That is a very quick way to constantly make marketing look like it's a fun thing we're doing.

Whenever someone brings up brand awareness, they're like, well, we're just we want brand awareness. Why? So they can become your friend and go to brunch? You want someone to be aware of you so then they give you money at some point. Let's be clear here about what that means.

But that thing, I'm so surprised how many times I run into folks that are like, I'm really struggling to report on ROI. And those two things are not connected. Devin, I saw you vigorously head nodding. What you got on your mind?

Devyn Bellamy: Oh, no. That was it.

Liz Moorhead: Oh, I love when people agree with me. Are you just telling me I'm right?

Devyn Bellamy: If your systems

Liz Moorhead: I love that.

Devyn Bellamy: Basically, yeah. If your systems aren't talking to each other, like, what are you even doing? Just like you need to have clear alignment between your marketing and your sales team, clear communication between your marketing and your sales team. You need to have clear alignment and clear communication between your CRM and your marketing automation system. And if you are not using 1 or the other, then you're not even ready for the ROI conversation yet.

You're still in start up mode, lemon stand mode, whatever you wanna call it. You're not ready to have that conversation of how much money is my marketing team making, and that is if you're struggling to convince c suite to make that spend. That would be the conversation I would have with them. It's like at the end of the day, we need to know how our marketing efforts are impacting sales, and we need to know what we need to change, what iterations we need to make in order to increase those good leads and in order to increase the amount of money that we're making. And in order to do that, we're going to have to spend on the proper software in order to get it.

And you can go through a laundry list of different systems, which may or may not talk to each other, or there is one particular, you know, SaaS company that may be able to help that has CRM, that has marketing automation, that has service, all of it tied in together along with your CMS. And and it's free to start with

Liz Moorhead: Dunkin' Donker. Yeah.

Max Cohen: That's it.

George B. Thomas: It it sounds

Liz Moorhead: like That's it.

George B. Thomas: It's very much like HubSpot. Just gonna throw that out there. But I have to say a couple things.

Liz Moorhead: Oh, that was my 3rd guess.

George B. Thomas: To say a couple things, here. 1, Liz, this must be your special day because I too agree with you. I literally wrote down on my notepad when Max was talking, I wrote down the words all in one. Everything is in one place. And I also wrote down when Max was talking about campaigns, the most magical thing that lives on the right hand side of your campaigns dashboard is influenced revenue.

Because you can point to influenced revenue and show the c suite this is what this bad boy is doing. Now I also have an answer to this, though, and it's it's gonna sound not about technology, but it's about technology. And that is well, it's about buy in, ladies and gentlemen. It's about buy in. Right?

You have to have a software solution, marketing sales, CRM service, whatever, that is easy to use. And there's 2 things that I wanna talk about around this. 1, it has to start by being built right, which HubSpot is doing a kickass job on. The second thing is it can't be boogered up, which every HubSpot audit I've done shows that somebody is boogering it up somehow. Like, you're adding things that you don't need to add.

You've got multiple, integrations from 3 years ago that nobody's using. Liz held up a sign I didn't have a chance to read because I was concentrating on the thing that I'm actually trying to talk about. But ladies and gentlemen, it's about buy in. So don't booger up your HubSpot and pay attention to what HubSpot's doing with their new updates, which, by the way, shout out to my dude, Kyle Jepsen, on freaking daily updates with all the crazy stuff that HubSpot's doing to make it an amazing tool for you.

Max Cohen: I don't know how that man sleeps. Also, what a what a plug for the operations hub, George. You're trying to sling some operation hub deals. Yeah.

Liz Moorhead: George, that was me holding up a George spitting fire alert. That's all that was. Also, colorful multiple usages of booger and booger. I didn't know it was such a flexible word.

George B. Thomas: Well, boogers are flexible. You match?

Liz Moorhead: So are the flexible. Okay.

George B. Thomas: Yeah.

Max Cohen: Badoom. Solid, dad joke.

Liz Moorhead: Solid. Speaking of boogers oh my god. Okay. Alright, guys. So what is a great speaking of boogers just kidding.

What does a great content marketing reporting cadence look like?

George B. Thomas: Oh, we're losing it. So here's the thing. What's funny is, Liz, the way that I'm gonna answer this is probably dramatically different than the way that Max or Devin or yourself might answer this because you use the word cadence, which means it feels like something that somebody would say, well, you check this on Tuesdays, and this you check every 2 weeks, and this you check on 30 days, and this should be every quarter. Like, it's a mathematical equation that you should follow, and then you're gonna automatically equal success of reporting cadence. Man, I check it all different all the time, but I'm always looking at it.

I'm always looking at what I just did and what I did 6 months ago. I'm always looking at, like, all of a sudden, something will peak up, and all of a sudden, there's a social, like, splattering about it, and it was like a post from 3 months ago. Well, stop. Look at it. What happened?

More important than the cadence is diagnosing when these things ping a little bit and taking time to actually reverse engineer what the freak did I do that actually got this action of success so I can repeat it again? And then the cadence becomes all the time because you're just jamming.

Liz Moorhead: I actually completely agree with you. And I the reason why I asked that question is because I think a lot of folks get hung up on it's a monthly report and it's a weekly report. And, yes, reporting matters and all of those fun things matter. But I love what you just said there. One of my favorite things that I used to do when I was at the editor in chief at Impact is we had a sales channel in Slack.

And somebody would be like, tada. Oh my gosh. Guess what? I just closed x deal for x amount. And then I was like, oh, this seems like a great time to show the value of content.

And so I would go digging into our little CRM, and I would say, thank you so much for sharing. Let me tell you about every single piece of content this point of contact consumed. I would tag every single person who wrote it, and I'd say, they just read this pillar on Google Ads by Jason Linde. Then they converted on a form and asked to talk to us. They talked to Mark.

And then after that, they read these three articles by Zach Bazner and then this guide by Jen Burrell. And, ta da da, congratulations, guys. Your content netted us however much that deal was worth. And I would do it whenever I would get a spare moment, but I love what you said there, George. It's something you should be looking at all the time.

You should always be looking for moments for everybody to be a winner.

George B. Thomas: It's interesting. You sent my brain in an interesting direction with that, Liz. And that is if you keep fundamentally, you're listening to this and you keep getting asked what's the ROI of our content. Maybe it's because you're not being obnoxious about telling success stories of all the things you've historically done. So to them, it sounds like crickets.

However, over on the left hand side of the business, it's a raging bonfire that everybody's, like, roasting marshmallows and hot dogs by and having a big freaking party. But the c suite isn't getting the story.

Devyn Bellamy: The thing is when it comes to reporting any kind of report, you need to be answering a question. You don't wanna be generating reports for the sake of generating reports. You don't wanna be talking for the sake of talking. You want to use data to tell a story. And if there's no story to be told, then why are you looking at the data?

You should step back. And even if it is as simple as did our content marketing efforts impact any deals, in the pipeline currently. Then it's like, okay. Cool. That's a great question.

Now if it's just like, okay. We're just gonna run this monthly report because that's what I did at my last job, then no, you're you're wasting everyone's time and inbox capacity. What you should be doing is building your cadence, your reports themselves, and the the content within them in order to inform and fill in the holes of a story and to be able to answer questions. There's there's just so much that can be done with data that you can go down a rabbit hole of cool things. Like, oh, look at how our things perform on full moons that fall between the 2nd 3rd weeks of the month.

And it's like, at that point, you're doing baseball statistics. That's not what we're doing. What we're doing is just trying to make informed decisions on our next move. Because marketing, with all the numbers that's behind it, it's still an art, not a science. The target is moving because at the end of the day, for all of the numbers that we're talking about and all the data that we're dealing with, this is all done in order to help us better connect with what?

Liz Moorhead: Human. Human. Yes. Not cyborg.

Max Cohen: Human, Cyborg. Humans.

Liz Moorhead: Nothing more than human. Intelligence. Leave this in, we're beautiful. And on that note, gentlemen, let's pretend for a moment that I'm a Hub Heroes listener, and I have the attention span and retention.

George B. Thomas: Oh my god.

Max Cohen: Oh, got you. No. Just sorry. Go ahead.

Liz Moorhead: Max, why you gotta out me like that?

George B. Thomas: She has to listen to it.

Liz Moorhead: I'm She

Devyn Bellamy: has to listen to it.

George B. Thomas: She does the show notes.

Devyn Bellamy: First time long time.

Liz Moorhead: So let's pretend for a moment that Max is a polite young gentleman drinking liquid death. Very nice and on brand. Fabulous. Fantastic. Let's pretend for a moment I have the attention span and retention of a concussed drunk Goldfish.

Max Cohen: Oh, wow.

Liz Moorhead: And I will only remember one thing from this episode. One thing. What should it be and why?

Max Cohen: Just report what actually matters.

Devyn Bellamy: Oh, that's easy. Inbound, 2016, Christopher Penn, building the data driven customer journey. Fast forward, watch the whole thing, but especially highlight at 20 minutes 30 seconds.

George B. Thomas: I wish I had a succinct answer, but I don't. But it is the one thing that I think is important. And as I listen to everything that we talked about today, the word abundance keeps coming to mind. And so I would beg you, the marketer out there that's listening to this, the c suite that's out there, the sales service operation, whoever the heck you are, the humans that are out there that you would create content, that you would report, that you would communicate out of a mindset of abundance versus scarcity. Because the power that you'll have as an engine of believing in yourself and that you're already there, the reporting, the ROI, the content will be 10 x anything that it could be if you're sitting there like Max said, and you're trying to always prove something instead of just being able to show something.

Liz Moorhead: My one thing is this. It's simple. Your sales and your marketing technology are either talking to each other or they aren't. I don't care how much your definitions are shared. I don't care how much your sales and marketing teams, they like each other so much.

They go out to happy hours and go on trips to Tahoe together. It don't matter. If your technology isn't talking to each other, those dots will never be connected. Invest in the technology or you're wasting your money, full stop. And now it's time hub heroes listeners for a new segment.

Yes. That's right. Every episode now, I'm gonna ask a horribly awkward question of all of our hub heroes. Hopefully, it will incite violence and confusion and memories. So here are you go.

Are you ready for the first secret question?

George B. Thomas: I'm a little scared right now. I'm just gonna throw that out there.

Liz Moorhead: Excellent. If you could give a piece of life advice to 1 superhero, what would the advice be, and to whom would you give it? Batman, Bruce Wayne, Bubby, get a therapist. My dude, what are you doing? Jumping around from building to building in latex.

Your villains are your personality. You need a hug, you need a therapist, and a butler doesn't count. Every time you talk about your feelings, Alfred gives you a pen that does something fun. See a therapist. You have the money.

Do it.

George B. Thomas: I would have to sit the Hulk down AKA Bruce Banner, and I'd be like, you're sexy and you know it, and just believe in who you are, my dude. Doesn't matter if you change back and forth. Just be you.

Liz Moorhead: I love the violent contrast between myself and George, and I think it tells you everything you need to know about our relationship. Bruce Wayne, go get a therapist. Hulk, you matter. You're a star.

Devyn Bellamy: For me, it's Green Lantern. I I would tell him to read more science fiction and fantasy because they it's so limited on the constructs created by Will. You can do so much more with such a wonderful but you're always making guns and missiles and handcuffs and shields. You there's so much more that you can make. Lean in lean in and get inspiration from others.

Watch, like, you know, Star Trek, Doctor Who. Get out there. Get inspired and just create something that's really gonna freak out your enemies.

George B. Thomas: See, the Green Lantern and the Wonder Twins should hang out for a while, and it would open his mind. That's old school cartoon for people right there.

Max Cohen: I would tell Spider Man to just clean up after himself. He's leaving a lot of web everywhere. Alright? And it's sticky.

George B. Thomas: I could easily tie back to buggers right here.

Liz Moorhead: I'm just wanting everybody to know

George B. Thomas: if I could tie back to buggers.

Liz Moorhead: Note, thank you so much for joining us on another excellent episode of Hub Heroes. Do not forget to subscribe, and most of all, do not forget to leave us a review. In fact, this week, I would challenge you. If you have not left a review yet, you should answer our secret question. Which superhero would you give life advice to, and what would that advice be?

And don't forget to talk about how pretty and right I am all the time. George, before we go, do you wanna say humans one more time?

Max Cohen: Give it humans. Oh, wow.

Liz Moorhead: Max, say cyborgs.

Max Cohen: Come on. Cyborgs.

Liz Moorhead: And we'll talk to and we'll talk to you all next week. Get out of my podcast. You can't? Stay here. Leave.

Go. Goodbye. It's over.

George B. Thomas: Okay, hub heroes. We've reached the end of another episode. Will lord lack continue to loom over the community, or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the hub heroes podcast? Make sure you tune in and find out in the next episode. Make sure you head over to the hub heroes.com to get the latest episodes and become part of the League of Heroes.

FYI, if you're part of the League of Heroes, you'll get the show notes right in your inbox, and they come with some hidden power up potential as well. Make sure you share this podcast with a friend. Leave a review if you like what you're listening to, and use the hashtag, hashtag hub euros podcast, on any of the socials and let us know what strategy conversation you'd like to listen into next. Until next time, when we meet and combine our forces. Remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human, and of course, always be looking for a way to be someone's hero.